What is the logic behind making military boot camps intensive?

My next piece focuses on the questions that often come up among people who haven’t been a part of the military experience concerning our indoctrination process into that life, i.e., boot camp. Even though boot camp is one of the few commonalities among all veterans, it is still completely misunderstood by those who haven’t experienced. It’s often portrayed methodologically in media as a place that transforms young boys into warrior robots, where lifelong brotherhoods are forged because they have to go through “hell” together, or worse, as an institution for the brainwashing of children into killers.

Since leaving the Corps in 2008, I’ve been fascinated in seeing how boot camp is able to do what it does,namely, by taking kids like me, at the ages of 17, 18, and 19, from a society which prides itself on the values of individualism, self-preservation, personal liberties and personal satisfaction and turning them into a force of warriors willing to run towards the sound of gunfire, danger, and suffer innumerable indignities and sufferings along the way. Once you get through the surface, which is actually quite terrible, you’ll begin to see the place for the marvel of psychological engineering that is.

Hopefully, throughout the next series, you as civilian readers or just nostalgic veterans can read through and gain a deeper appreciation for the foundational training that sets apart the world’s greatest warrior class from everyone else.